In its acute form, the viral liver disease can be treated and will leave a person’s system within two months. In some cases the disease turns chronic and the person remains infected, running the risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer. No word yet on Emelianenko’s exact condition, though as long as he carries the virus he’ll be unable to fight in the United States, which means this could potentially be a career-ender. His last two professional fights — in July and October of 2007 — were held in Canada, which also requires blood tests for fighters, suggesting that Emelianenko acquired the disease relatively recently. Says Wikipedia:

Good goddamn work, people: With over 150 entries, this week’s caption contest was our most popular ever, and so many of them were LOLworthy. I must say I was surprised by how many of you referenced Brad Pitt and Angelina Joile — I’m not judging, I was just a little taken aback, that’s all. Thanks again to Triumph United for making this possible. Now onto the honorable mentions…

MMA-hole: It was at that point that Fedor began to wonder…were his wife and Sakuraba more than just “friends”?

Brad: Fedor and Aleks stop by the Affliction sweat shop to thank the tailors.

Toner Breath: SPUTNIPS!! [Ed. note: I racked my brain trying to think of a good one-word pun for this picture. Toner Breath's is kind of horrible, but I give him mad props for trying. And judging from the exclamation points, he was also pretty psyched that he thought of it.]

Mike: It’s cheaper than a graphing calculator.

Erick: “Phuk An’ Run is the little-known Chinese martial art of having a kid and making your opponent raise them.”

Kimbo’s Lice: “…The stars signify that I’ll never be brought to my knees. This spiderweb on my elbow signifies that I’ve committed murder in service to the brotherhood of thieves. The grim reaper and baby on my back…you know what, I probably shouldn’t be telling you kids all this.”

“At the moment we can’t certainly say the bout will take place come July because the contract is not signed. However, the both parties are involved in the negotiation process and we are about to break the finishing tape although we haven’t come to an agreement concerning every detail as of yet”

Vadim, I swear to God, if you fuck this up. Of course, the details they’re still hashing out likely have to do with money and the ring-vs.-cage thing. But the thought of Vadim playing hardball in negotiations when Fedor finally has the chance to face a top-ten heavyweight outside of the UFC is completely infuriating. For all of Finkelchtein/Echteld’s efforts to protect Emelianenko’s value (i.e., ensure he doesn’t take fights he can lose), they don’t seem to realize that Fedor’s value drops further each month that he doesn’t face credible opponents. You gotta give a little, guys! For the record, MMAPayout is reporting that Emelianenko has already been offered over $2 million per fight from Affliction.

But Finkelchtein’s statement wasn’t the only interesting bit posted on M1MixFight this week…

M1Mixfight.com has posted the results of last night’s M-1 Challenge event in St. Petersburg, where all three Red Devil Sport Club headliners walked away with victories. Amar Suloev scored a first-round TKO over Jacek Buczko, Roman Zentsov won a split decision over Daniel Tabera, and Aleks Emelianenko executed Silvao Santos, who came into the fight with an MMA record of just 1-0. Video of the squash match “Superfight” is above, and full results are after the jump.

As reported here earlier, Aleksander Emelianenko will be headlining an M-1 Challenge event in St. Petersburg on April 3rd. M1MixFight now has more details on the event, revealing that “Aleksandr Emelyanenko” (whoever that is) will be facing former Brazilian pro boxer Fabio Maldonado, who has compiled a 4-1 MMA record facing nobody you’ve ever heard of. In the event’s other “superfights,” Roman Zentsov will take on equally anonymous Brazilian fighter Junior dos Santos (5-1), and Amar Suloev will take on Polish journeyman Jacek Buczko (11-3).

I know — dullsville, right? But the night’s main card might provide some patriotic excitement, as a separate Russian team will compete against a Japanese crew, and a quintet of Fins face off against Team Korea. The lineups:

As for M-1 Global, their site is still a dead-end, and Russian MMA reports that Vadim Finkelchtein wrested control of the operation from the Americans last month. So, Mitchell Maxwell and Monte Cox should be receiving the news in another few weeks.

Might as well pop some Excedrin now, because your head will be aching after this one. According to ADCombat.com, M-1 Global is quietly setting up its first event in Russia, which will go down at St. Petersburg’s 3000-seat Ice Palace on April 3rd. One of the promotional images is above; the event will be headlined by Aleksander Emelianenko (against a yet-unnamed opponent), with M-1/PRIDE/Bodog vets Roman Zentsov and Amar Suloev also scheduled to fight (ditto). According to ADCombat’s anonymous “Russian insider”:

“With the Russian elections last weekend, advertising before [then] was next to impossible, as most attention is focused on the elections. The smaller venue may indicate a good bit of pragmatism on the part of the promoters, since they are only going to have a month or so to really push the event.”

So, by now you’re thinking, “if this is supposed to be an M-1 Global event, why does that ad clearly say M-1 Mix Fight?” Very good question. ADCombat writes:

In a previous conversation, M-1 Global’s Monte Cox confirmed that [Vadim] Finkelstein and [Apy] Echteld would be promoting events with the M-1 Global name, however the infrastructure for the show and promotion are independent of what Cox will use when M-1 Global begins to move forward in the United States.

Which explains absolutely nothing, considering that Finkelchtein isn’t promoting this event with M-1 Global’s name, but under his old Mix Fight label. According to RussianMMA.com, the St. Petersburg event will actually be the second leg of the not-very-well-publicized “M-1 Challenge” that we briefly mentioned last month. The first M-1 Challenge event was apparently held last Sunday in the Netherlands, with the Fedor-coached Russian Red Devil Sports Club competing against France’s Team Amossou, and a Netherlands team taking on a pack of Germans; shockingly, the Russians lost three out of five matches to the Frenchmen. (Don’t ask how the Netherlands/Germany matchups went down, because results weren’t published on M1MixFight.com, and news hasn’t yet trickled down to any other American MMA websites.)

RussianMMA reports that the April 3rd M-1 Challenge event will include teams from Russia, Japan, and “Europe,” and Emelianenko/Zentsov/Suloev will be competing in superfights. Checking M-1 Global’s official site, of course, confirmed nothing — it hasn’t been updated since New Year’s Eve, and you can’t expect Monte Cox to keep tabs on Vadim all the time. Especially when M-1 Global is such a disorganized pit of confusion…

In honor of today’s juicy rumor, here’s the 5/5/06 PRIDE fight between Barnett and A. Emelianenko. The ten-minute first round was an action-packed standup war, with both fighters exchanging bombs. But Barnett out-hustled Aleks in the second, taking him to the ground and working for a submission. As we’ve seen before, Aleks isn’t too awesome on his back. But we’d definitely open our wallets to witness these two go at it again…

Next bout of Aleksander Emelianenko will be held on April 11 in Chicago.

Currently we are negotiating for Aleksander’s opponent. Most likely it will be Josh Barnett.

Aleks won three bouts in 2007 by first-round stoppage, while Barnett hasn’t competed in an MMA event since his decision loss to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira on New Year’s Eve 2006; since then, the Babyface Assassin’s name has consistently popped up as the guy with the best chance of beating Fedor Emelianenko. It doesn’t look like M-1 wants to threaten its golden calf so soon — a loss for Fedor basically negates their reason for being — but an Aleks/Barnett rematch would be the next best thing. The two fighters previously fought at PRIDE Total Elimination Absolute in May 2006, where Barnett handed Aleksander one of his three career losses, a second-round submission via keylock. Keep your fingers and toes crossed and we might get to see Aleks have his bloody revenge.

Also of interest on Aleksander’s Mixfight page is the other “23 ?????? 2008 ?” post, which appears to be a rap song recorded by the fighter. You can listen to it here. Dude kinda sounds like a Russian DMX. Anybody who can translate the lyrics gets 1000 CagePotato Gold Stars, which can be redeemed later for Camel Cash.

We’re not sure why so many people are talking about Saturday’s Gabriel Gonzaga/Fabricio Werdum fight at UFC 80 like it’s a foregone conclusion that Gonzaga’s getting his arm raised at the end of the night. Werdum is unquestionably a tough dude — he beat Gonzaga once before, back in 2003, and is only the third person (in addition to heavyweight legends Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic and Josh Barnett) to have defeated Aleksander Emelianenko. Here’s the Werdum/Emelianenko fight from “2H2H: PRIDE and Honor” in November 2006. We kind of think Aleks was having an off night, but Werdum dominated the entire match, putting things to a stop with a triangle choke in the first round. Werdum’s next fight was an ugly unanimous decision loss to Andrei Arlovski; here’s hoping he finds his balls again.

But they’ll have to work together to stop a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top…

[Cut to montage soundtracked by pounding drums, with brief shots of car chases, sex scenes, and naked bathhouse knife-fights edited together faster and faster until it ends with the sound/image of a gunshot]

[Cut to shot of Aleksander Emelianenko, who holds a lit cigarette over a pool of gasoline, says "The devil never sleeps," then drops it]